Medicine and the Moral Law in the Christian Tradition: Patience, Charity, and Humanity’s Vocation to Share in the Life of God

The aims of religion and medicine differ. Religion purposes to make people holy while medicine intends to make people healthy. In the Christian tradition, the call to holiness is the primary vocation of humanity. An individual’s health, then, is a good insofar as it is conducive to the person’s attaining a greater good: fellowship with God.

The Christian tradition recognizes that God has communicated to humanity how we might come into right relationship with God. God has done this in two ways: (1) the revealed law, and (2) the natural law. These two laws are derived from one source, the moral law. God does not arbitrarily fabricate the moral law. On the contrary, the moral law communicates to humanity what is truly best for us. God’s law nurtures human flourishing by directing us toward our proper end as creatures intended for communion with our Creator.

The revealed law subsists within the Torah, and the natural law is articulated in the Christian community’s observation of the physical realm. Each of these laws lays claim on the human body and requires certain practices and attitudes of the religious person.

However, the Christian tradition maintains that humanity is in a wounded state, a state of sin in which we are unable to fulfill the moral law as expressed by the revealed law and the natural law. Human persons in a state of sin do not attain their greater end, holiness, even while they may be in a state of apparent physical health.

To practice medicine and receive medical care in a truthful relationship with the order of things created and Persons divine, we must submit the practice of medicine to the guidance of the moral law, which is ultimately fulfilled in the Incarnation. In the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, humanity and divinity are restored to right relationship with one another. Jesus’ life demonstrates that the whole of the moral law is summed up in the virtue of charity; His sufferings show the possibility of patience bearing a redemptive quality; His resurrection teaches that humanity is purposed for eternal happiness with God. Holiness is of greater importance than health to our death-destined bodies.